The Timber Haulers, 1 August 1911

Malcolm Osborne RA (1880 - 1963)

RA Collection: Art

Malcolm Osborne became a Royal Academician in 1926, having been elected associate during World War I (Osborne served in the Artists’ Rifles and was informed of his election while in command of a trench mortar company outside Jerusalem). He succeeded another academician, Sir Frank Short, as professor of etching and engraving at the Royal College of Art in 1924.

Osborne submitted Timber Haulers, which reproduces a painting by C.W. Furse in a private collection, as his Diploma Work. This large etching depicts a team of horses pulling a wagon up a country lane. Furse painted the source picture in 1904, the year that the artist was elected associate of the RA and died at the age of thirty-six. Timber Haulers was not among the paintings by Furse exhibited at the RA in 1904, but Osborne’s decision to submit the etching as his Diploma Work may owe something to the esteem in which Furse was held by his friends, who after his election as associate predicted he would be a future candidate for President of the RA.

In his introduction to the 1929 volume on Osborne in the Modern Masters of Etching series, Malcolm C. Salaman wrote that: 'when the Art Union wanted Charles Furse's picture "Timber Haulers" translated into etching, they naturally turned to Osborne, who so assimilated his art to the painter's, that it appeared to be an original work in black and white rather than a mere reproduction'. The print was not, however, one of the twelve plates by Osborne reproduced in the book.